A Thing That Happened at Home the Other Day

In June we’d lost our old boy, Beta.

He almost made it to 16.
He was extremely handsome and poised.
And quite the accomplished horticulturalist.

We thought we were done with cats because we had already had the best one ever.

Finally, last Saturday the boy and I stopped by Morris Animal Refuge to inquire about donating pet beds.

On a whim we also asked if we could look at their cats.

That’s when we met “Eeyore” (back) & “Pooh Bear” (front)
We pet “Pooh Bear” while “Eeyore” pretended he wasn’t looking.

We eventually left and immediately started talking about how we couldn’t possibly… right now… and… what would we even name them?!

I also started worrying that there were likely cats in our area who were sitting at “kill shelters” that might be more urgently in need of a home.

I ended up cruising the ACCT (Animal Care & Control Team) Philly‘s website, and, there he was. (He even looks a little like Beta.)

“Merlie”, a depressed boy who was on the chopping block due to his withdrawn behavior & refusal to take meds for an upper respiratory infection.

He’d been time stamped & sentenced to die this Monday the 13th. It was already late Saturday when I found him so we raced down to the shelter on Sunday. ((If you’re in the area & looking to adopt, they are open 7 days a week.) Good news, we were too late only in that he’d already gone with a rescue group.

Which left us… still thinking about “Eeyore” & “Pooh Bear”. We ran right back to Morris but they weren’t allowing visitors. (They accept walk-ins Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.) So we filled out the application online, geared up first thing on Monday and were waiting outside their doors minutes before open.

Once we got them home the boys went straight for under the guest bed. Classic cat maneuver. Here is “Pooh Bear”, now (Joseph) Heller.
“Eeyore”, (David Foster) Wallace still hiding behind his slightly more courageous brother.
Soon Heller became quite the explorer.
Wallace preferred just the cat bed, thank you.
Last night Heller decided it was time to get close.
And this morning Wallace thought I wasn’t too bad, either.
Not to be outdone, Heller then shows me his best cuddle roll.
They do everything together.
And this house has been made more wonderful with them two in it.

So that’s a thing that happened in the house the other day. Turns out, there’s really no replacement for the best cat ever, so you just gotta get two.

Dispatches from Camping # 1

The young woman who had seen the wind in my hair is dead

She had been driving a car we shared

a lifetime ago

And she was just crazy enough to

let me hang part way out of the front passenger seat

(But who had taken the picture that I can still see?)

She’s never been in the car I drive now

She’s never seen my fields of corn

my lakes

the few cows standing apart in the rain

My coast to coast

My sister who saw the wind in my hair & laughed

is dead

Sometimes I can’t believe almost everything is still allowed to happen

I will never again have another day like the ones we used to have

Little Good Things Growing

One of my favorite sayings of Amanda’s was always “invest in things that grow”, and it just so happened we left our high rise apartment dwelling in the winter after she took her own life, and for the first time in my life I owned outdoor space. Now every growing season I tend to my tiny urban patches daily, and it’s one of the most rewarding undertakings I have ever known.

In July I harvested beets for the first time, from what I call my $0 garden. Alpine Mignonette Strawberries are in their second year and were grown from seed. Golden beet seeds from a seed exchange with an old schoolmate. The cherry tomato is a volunteer from my compost.

The beets and tomatoes were incorporated into this lovely salad. One day I’ll grow the carrot, cucumber, ginger and lettuce too!
My basils’ (Genovese & Purple Petra) haircut got turned into pesto with some old chopped walnuts sitting in the pantry. When I grow sunflowers again I’ll be using sunflower seeds instead.
I trimmed yam leaves from the grocery store and rooted them in water. Once the roots were several inches long I transplanted them into soil. Now I have yam leaves to eat from my own roof!
I also bought a kabocha pumpkin many months ago and saved and germinated the seeds. This may be my only fruit from the endeavor, but we’ve enjoyed the blossoms all spring and summer so far.
Another “volunteer” tomato. This one is apparently not a cherry variety.
I saved a pineapple top from a pineapple from the grocery store. I was able to get it to root in water and then I transplanted it in soil. Due to the fact that this method only produces a single pineapple in 3-5 years. I have taken to calling it “Mini’s (High School) Graduation Pineapple” ??
This is a volunteer morning glory that got carried to me by the wind or the birds. There is a diner down the street with a whole wall of this stuff so I think of it as a gift from them.
The last harvest of July: I plucked some tomatoes and trimmed a little basil for upcoming pizza night. I also found a single All-Stars Strawberry which is another variety that I have but isn’t a very productive bunch. The kabocha blossoms I nip because I rarely see female blossoms that can be pollinated to produce fruit, so we end up just eating all the mostly male blossoms.

Trying Something New

For months now, maybe even close to a year, I’ve been gently nudging Mini to post some of her really wonderful poetry on here (don’t worry, she’s fairly compensated!) but she’s understandably shy & rather busy too. So I thought why don’t I take the first plunge and stop being a hypocrite. I am in fact going to be a plagiarist and also title this, in Mini’s style,

 

Some Sort of Poem

for some reason

I am afraid

someday it might be like

I’ve just imagined you

all along

*

we’re all familiar

with the old adage

that you die a second death

when someone utters

your name

one final time

*

What of the living?

Do we all

lose you again?

When we forget

When we might not even

register

that we’ve said what

made us think of you

one last time

without

meaning to

*

if our voices were

so powerful

that we could

(even unknowingly)

deliver you into oblivion

why have I not

been able to

speak you

into existence.